11/13/2003
3 hours:I started deburring all the holes that I drilled on the rudder. While I was doing this I noticed that I had a line of nasty oval-shaped holes on the bottom of the rudder where I had to match-drill a piece of metal without any clecos. I guess my clamps (all 10 of them) slipped. The ovals were in the skin only; since the skin is so thin a drill will wander wherever the underlying hole takes it.After some initial despair (oval holes weaken the rivet quite a bit), I mailed Van's asking them if there was anything I could do besides ordering a new skin and stiffeners. They came back to me with the idea of drilling the holes out to 1/8" and using big AN4 rivets. They do indeed look pretty similar to smaller AD3 rivets once they are driven. So I drilled these holes out. I will need a 1/8" pop rivet dimpler though since it is impossible to dimple some of the complex rudder parts in a conventional way.
Stuck again and in need of some mindless work, I started on the elevator, cutting out all the stiffeners. There are 31 of them total, and I had a blister by the time I was done.
